Conference Agenda

The analysis focuses on how sociocultural contexts of permanent liminality (Szakolczai, 2001; 2017) with their sustained chaos and absurdities impair meaning making and expose culture members to frequent experiences of liminal hotspots. The latter term has been introduced by Stenner (2017), and is defined as an impasse in transitions, resulting in enhanced affectivity and suggestibility. Using epistemic discourse analysis as a method, the author studies the discursive patterns of Hungary’s soft dictatorship on a prototypical sample of contemporary political speeches, films, and jokes. Results indicate that the absurdities inherent in double bind discourse, as well as floating and empty signifiers are powerful discursive means to halt constructive transformations. On a societal level, this is the shared experience of living in a troubled world – with an enhanced probability of exploitation through manipulation. On the personal level, such contexts and cultural practices lead to the disintegration of the dialogical self and the development of a vulnerable, defensive, or fake identities. The implications of these domestic findings can be generalized to today’s rapidly expanding global-level contexts of permanent liminality with their tormenting liminal hotspots.

Background: Seclusion and restraint continue to be used despite evidence of their harmful effects in healthcare settings. This study aims to develop a systemic, decision-oriented model to understand and mitigate these practices within the French healthcare system.

Methods: The study uses a modeling-based approach to explore systemic factors affecting coercive practices in psychiatric care. It involves two phases: (1) creating a Coercion Descriptive Model (CD-Model) from literature reviews and qualitative surveys to outline influencing factors; (2) developing a Coercion Quantitative Model (CQ-Model) by quantifying the CD-Model, assigning weights through expert evaluations, and assessing hospitals' ability to reduce coercion.

Results: The CD-Model outlines four hierarchical dimensions and 24 factors that affect coercion-related decisions, offering a detailed framework for analysis. The CQ-Model enhances this by introducing 11 supervision indicators through mathematical aggregation, providing precise tools for organizational evaluation.

Conclusion: By synthesizing qualitative insights and quantitative assessments, these models equip healthcare managers to critically examine and reform practices related to coercion. This research marks a significant step towards systemic change in mental health practices, emphasizing the role of qualitative methods in developing operational frameworks to decrease coercive measures in mental healthcare, encouraging further mixed-methods research for deeper understanding and application.

This study examines contact severance phenomena between parents and children in high-conflict divorced families through an ecological-systemic lens. Using a qualitative-ethnographic methodology, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 60 participants, including professionals and family members. The analysis was based on the Dialectical-Constructivist approach. The research aims to develop an innovative theoretical model mapping the various systems influencing contact severance phenomena, including welfare, legal, psychological, health, and educational systems. Initial findings identified three central axes: (1) systemic splits and mutual sabotage versus cooperation needs, (2) visibility issues and professional-parental self-positioning, and (3) systemic chaos versus planning and professional responsibility. Results indicate that understanding and treating contact severance requires considering the complex interactions between family dynamics and institutional systems. The findings emphasize the need for enhanced collaboration among and between systems, and for development of specialized expertise development in therapeutic, health, legal and education domains to address this challenging phenomenon effectively.

Self-harm is a major cause of morbidity and the strongest predictor of suicide worldwide, disproportionately affecting deprived communities and people with mental illness. Factors linked to self-harm are common in violence. Registers can provide long-term data that can inform prevention strategies, track emerging trends, and monitor the effectiveness of interventions. The aim of the study reported here was to understand stakeholders’ perspectives on setting-up and running a self-harm and IPV register. So far, we have completed 26 online semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders. Preliminary analysis of data using reflexive thematic analysis indicate that that stakeholder groups differ in their interpretations of key concepts such as self-harm, IPV and mental health and how they relate to each other, as well as the type of information to be collected. Stakeholders agree on the challenges of collecting, sharing, and using meaningful information – including at individual (e.g. asking questions about IPV), organisational (e.g. decisions about data sharing) and policy level (e.g., funding arrangements). Preliminary findings highlight the need to raise awareness of drivers of and links between self-harm and IPV, and the need of engagement work with key stakeholders to develop a shared understanding and vision of a registry.